Alderwood gull mask

Nuu-Chah-Nulth, 18th century
ADFrom Vancouver Island, British Columbia,
North America

This wooden mask is decorated with flicker
feathers. It also has a rattle of small limpet shells inside, which
sounded when dancing. It would have been used in the winter
ceremonial. Gulls herald plentiful food, since they announce the
arrival of herring in the spring by shrieking, wheeling and diving
over fish shoals.

A number
of bird masks were collected during Captain Cook's voyage
in 1778 from the Mowachaht (a division of the Nuu-Chah-Nulth) in
British Columbia. According to the accounts of the voyage, a
performance was enacted on one occasion with a bird mask that
seemed to produce its own song. It was recorded
that:

'[A Native]
today put up before his face an image of a bird's head
& offered it for sale, at the same time shaking it up and
down, while another person sitting by him applyed a small whistle
to his Belly so as to collect the air by drawing the Skin round it
& immitated in some measure the whistling of a bird; this
being supposed to be done by some Contrivance raised the Value of
it so much in the Eye of one of our collectors of Curiosities, that
he immediately offered a very large price for it which was as
quickly
accepted...'

This
was the first Northwest Coast mask to be published, in the 1784
posthumous account of Captain Cook's third
voyage.

J.C.H. King, First peoples, first contacts: (London, The British Museum Press, 1999)